by Sharad Swaney
Dear Room,
People are trying to turn Halloween into the night America’s surveillance cameras go dark.
The campaign is being called “De-Flock America.” Posts spreading across Instagram, X and Reddit are urging people to target Flock Safety cameras on October 31, when streets will already be full of costumes, masks and crowds.
There is no public leader. No official membership list. Nobody knows how many people will actually participate.
There is just a date and a target.
Flock says it now has more than 120,000 cameras across the country.
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Halloween is the plan.
Dexerto reported Tuesday that posts are calling for Flock cameras to be disabled, covered or destroyed. Halloween provides crowds, costumes and masks.
The campaign is uncoordinated. There is no proof that thousands of people are preparing to act, and social-media hype is not the same thing as an organized operation.
Damaging a camera is vandalism and can bring criminal charges. This post reports the campaign. It does not instruct anyone to commit a crime.
I am telling you that the anger is real.
What Flock built.
Flock cameras are automated license-plate readers. They sit beside roads, at intersections, near neighborhood entrances and outside businesses. Every passing vehicle can be photographed and logged with its plate, color, make, model, location, time and other identifying features.
You do not need to be suspected of a crime. The camera records the car first. Police search the database later.
Flock says its technology is used in more than 12,000 communities. The company told Axios it has more than 120,000 cameras nationwide. Thousands of police agencies in 49 states can search and share data across jurisdictions.
Police say the system helps recover stolen cars, locate missing people and identify suspects. Flock says its technology supported roughly one million investigations last year and helped locate about 10,000 missing people.
The frightening thing about Flock is not that it watches criminals. It watches everyone and waits for someone to decide who counts as one.
Why people want it gone.
The backlash did not begin with Halloween.
The Associated Press reported that dozens of cities and agencies have ended relationships with Flock amid concerns about immigration enforcement, unauthorized tracking and officers using the system for personal searches.
University of Washington researchers found that Border Patrol had apparent access to data from at least ten Washington agencies that had not authorized sharing. Flock later admitted limited federal pilots, acknowledged inaccurate public statements and paused them.
A Texas deputy ran a nationwide search for a woman after a self-managed abortion. Flock says her family reported her missing and no charges were filed. The search still exposed the system’s power.
In Roseville, California, police reviewed 1,427 stolen-vehicle and felony alerts from 2023 and 2024. Investigators found that 71 percent involved misread plates. The department said no incorrect alert caused a stop or arrest because officers independently verified the results.
That safeguard worked there. It is still insane that it was needed more than a thousand times.
Why I am asking now.
I hate Flock cameras. I hate that a private company built a searchable map of ordinary people’s movements before most of us understood it was happening. I hate that cities signed contracts first and explained them later. I hate that there is no real way to opt out of having your car logged.
So let me say it plainly: fuck Flock.
If you want reporting that follows this beyond the viral Halloween post, become a paid subscriber. I will keep watching the contracts, the lawsuits, the data-sharing records and what actually happens on October 31.
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The legal fight is already working.
People do not have to destroy cameras to beat this system.
Residents are mapping the network through the open-source DeFlock project. They are filing public-records requests, packing council meetings and forcing votes on contracts that many communities barely discussed the first time.
The pressure is landing. Flock recently announced mandatory case codes for police searches, an audit tool designed to flag abnormal behavior and a shorter standard retention period of seven days instead of thirty. Many of those requirements must be implemented by January 1.
Lago Vista, Texas, a city Donald Trump carried by twenty points in 2024, voted unanimously to end its Flock contract. This is not left against right. Nobody enjoys being watched without permission.
The quiet part.
The scariest thing about this Halloween story is not the masks.
It is that officials built a system capable of recording the movements of nearly every driver who passes it, then acted surprised when people became furious.
I do not know whether “De-Flock America” night will become a real nationwide event. Neither does anyone else. Viral posts are not an organized operation.
But the campaign has already revealed something important. Flock created a surveillance network so hated that strangers are independently arriving at the same fantasy: one night when the cameras stop watching.
Do not get arrested for a pole-mounted camera. Do not give the company a clean story about reckless vandals attacking public safety.
Put the contract on the council agenda. Demand the audit logs. Ask which agencies searched your town’s data. Make officials vote in public. Force them to defend every camera with their names attached.
If this story made you look differently at the black box beside the road, Restack it. Most people still do not know what Flock records, how large the network has become or that they may already pass several cameras every day.
Thank you for being in this room.
— Sharad
If you want to support this work or donate without a subscription, you can chip in directly through Venmo at @sharadswaney or you can buy me a coffee. Every bit genuinely helps keep the reporting going.
A note for the room: I am 19 years old, running a nonprofit and this publication on my own. I work with research and editing tools, including Claude, an AI assistant, to keep up, the way other reporters work with editors and fact-checkers. Every quote and every source in this post was verified by me before anything went live. Other people will not tell you this, but I really care about journalistic integrity. Letting you know I use these tools to help me do this work all on my own is important to me. The room means trust, and trust means I tell you how the work gets made.
Dexerto, Aug. 18, 2026: the viral Halloween campaign, its lack of a known organizer and the calls circulating online.
Associated Press, Aug. 13, 2026: Flock’s platform changes, law-enforcement use and the nationwide backlash.
Axios, Aug. 17, 2026: Flock’s camera count, reported misuse and contract cancellations.
University of Washington Center for Human Rights: documented access by immigration authorities and cross-agency searches.
Flock Safety: the company’s account of its federal pilots and its response to criticism.
DeFlockILM: background on the open-source camera-mapping movement and lawful local organizing.
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